Mystery solved: MSNBC says “GOP flubs ObamaCare launch”

posted at 12:41 pm on October 18, 2013 by Ed Morrissey

Well, let’s recap. ObamaCare passed Congress almost entirely on Democratic votes [see update]. The Obama administration has taken more than three years to build a website on what turns out to be ten-year-old technology without bothering to test it, and now it’s passing bad data in every direction. And yet, in a discussion on what’s going wrong with ObamaCare, MSNBC offers a chyron that states that the GOP flubbed the launch of ObamaCare.

What makes this amusing is that the conversation could have turned to whether the Republicans shot themselves in the foot with the shutdown by eclipsing all of the bad news from the rollout. That would explain that chyron, but clearly that’s not where the conversation went. Instead, the panel spent more than four minutes discussing how badly the rollout has gone and the fact that the White House might be forced into the position of delaying the individual mandate anyway, despite outlasting the GOP in the shutdown impasse.

Ironically, the entire segment demonstrates why the chyron would be inaccurate in any context — and why the tactical retreat on the shutdown might turn out to be a strategic victory for Republicans in the long run. Without the breathless minute-by-minute updates from Capitol Hill on the shutdown, the biggest national story and shared experience is the disastrous ObamaCare rollout, which is so bad and so big that even MSNBC can’t ignore it.

Update: My recollection was that Rep. Joseph Cao (R-LA) voted for the final version of ObamaCare. He didn’t; he voted for an earlier draft in November 2009, but voted against the final version in March 2010. I’ve amended the opening paragraph.

Blowback

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It was a mistake for Obama refuse to accept the delay offer just so he could hear the MSM say he got a “win”. People are going to more or less forget about this shutdown and Obama is going to have to unilaterally delay more parts of his Law of the Land Signature Achievement.

Ironically, the entire segment demonstrates why the chyron would be inaccurate in any context — and why the tactical retreat on the shutdown might turn out to be a strategic victory for Republicans in the long run.

Tactical retreat my eye! The Confederates leaving Atlanta as Sherman was approaching was a tactical retreat. What we saw this week was the complete and total surrender by cowards unwilling to fight. It was the establishment Republicans at their worst complete with billions in pork for the lead Republican negotiator in the Senate, undermining fellow Republicans for disagreeing with the party elite, and of course the now meaningless vow that the next time there would be a serious battle.

“Ok, I’m done with Hot Air. I’m not a mexican and I dont’ appreciate being forced to listen to one of your spanish adds. Your script wouldn’t let me turn off the volume.”

Websites don’t have that much control over what ads Google Adsense serves up. Much of that is determined by the keywords and other page content, which is why pro- ads sometimes turn up on anti- sites and vice-versa.

The auto-play video ads are annoying, besides making the sites that employ them NSFW. Hear, that forbes.com?

If MSNBC is talking about the disaster, someone from the admin must have squeeled about the problems. I don’t believe for one second that anyone in the media would come to their own conclusion without “support” from the administration.

When you have lost MSNBC, you have lost everything. Now that they are daring to utter on air the unthinkable, delaying the individual mandate, is there anything left of the law that is actually in effect?

That’s not all. Obamacare may have a total of 11 million words now, but anything that complicated must have contradictions and typos, so next week I can assure you it will have a substantially different 11 million words. How would you like being responsible for understanding an 11 million word system where 250,000 words are changed every week or every month? They are probably updating whole chapters as we speak. So you have to read and understand the original 11 million words and keep up with the monthly avalanche of changes too.

Now the MSM & republican moderates are free to report on the obamacare rollout to their hearts’ content. Go for it. We all know how you have been cheated out of reporting on it because of the evil Cruz and Lee defund movement. Oh wait, illegal aliens are demanding amnesty NOW or things are going to get ugly so better start lobbying for immigration “reform instead.

Obamacare never would have passed the house back then if so many Democrats hadn’t been elected in gerrymandered districts.

It’s the GOP’s fault for not winning local elections and allowing Dems to gerrymander those districts.

It is also the GOP’s fault for assisting in passing the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The Dems had a supermajority in the Senate and they chose to offer up legislation co-sponsored by the Senate Minority Leader when they could have gotten a completely partisan bill. The final bill passed with overwhelming majority support of both parties in both chambers. If they Republicans hadn’t worked with the Dems back then, the Dems could have passed a bill without Republican support and everything would have been better…just like Obamacare.

Essentially, it is the Republican’s fault for being so bipartisan throughout the history of America. If they would have been more bipartisan on Obamacare, then the Dems wouldn’t have gotten exactly what they wanted…an unmitigated disaster.

While everyone knows Obamacare will fail I don’t think even the gop imagined the administration could not get something so simple as the website to work. This is the federal government at work. It also illustrates to me when the replacement to obamacare is legislated single payer will not even be discussed in a serious manner. The government has failed why would anyone think even more government interference would work.

While everyone knows Obamacare will fail I don’t think even the gop imagined the administration could not get something so simple as the website to work. This is the federal government at work. It also illustrates to me when the replacement to obamacare is legislated single payer will not even be discussed in a serious manner. The government has failed why would anyone think even more government interference would work.

Ellis on October 18, 2013 at 1:47 PM

The government only failed because the Private Insurance marketplace is too complex for the government to interact with. Additionally, the government had to rely on private IT contractors to put together the website and exchanges. Cut out profit motive of the evil private companies and there will be rainbows and unicorns for everyone. This just gives us more reason to hire more government IT specialists who can manage projects of this scale rather than depending on private companies to provide their years of expertise. All of this gives even more reason to go single payer. Public-Private partnerships only fail because of the private sector.

Something not really OT: “Low information voter” is a bit pejorative: wouldn’t it be more diplomatic, and more accurate, to call them “Mal-informed voters?”

PersonFromPorlock on October 18, 2013 at 1:56 PM

Both terms miss the mark. They use words like “information” and “informed.” These people are simply not informed in the sense that they are functional members of society. But ask them about the Kardashians…..

Go back many months, back to the Supremes deciding that a health insurance act is somehow a legal tax on individuals.
The Obama administration was cheering and excited.

Kathleen Simplemind, the head of the HHS, stated that she thought since the Supremes said it was law that the Repubs would then stop trying to end it, and all the states would form their own exchanges.
Didn’t happen that way though.

The Repub states said in effect- if you think it’s so great, you do it. So, the feds had to do something they hadn’t counted on doing…set up exchanges for millions of people in different states with a multitude of insurance providers. They couldn’t do it, they would need another 5 years to set this up right.
They had to hide how much it was really going to cost the public, and they had to hide just what it all meant.
They tried to bluff their way through, deny any problem because it would make Obama look like a doofus.

So here we are; the whole Dem outfit look like fools and Obama looks like a doofus. In their minds, it’s the Repubs fault because they didn’t go along with this fiasco of a law.

Both terms miss the mark. They use words like “information” and “informed.” These people are simply not informed in the sense that they are functional members of society. But ask them about the Kardashians…..

Happy Nomad on October 18, 2013 at 2:04 PM

You don’t know that. Certainly the Progs I joust with in the local paper show no signs of Kardashian-saturation: what they do display is the false version of reality inculcated by media malpractice. I think “mal-informed” describes them exactly.

You don’t know that. Certainly the Progs I joust with in the local paper show no signs of Kardashian-saturation: what they do display is the false version of reality inculcated by media malpractice. I think “mal-informed” describes them exactly.

PersonFromPorlock on October 18, 2013 at 2:18 PM

Mal-informed means they’ve simply been lied to. It does not begin to plumb the depths of stupidity the left shows these days.

Obama and his Dem controlled Senate were unwilling to compromise with Reps like Cruze and risk further damage to the US economy through a possible default; all over Obamacare, which if it was so important, then why was the technology behind it a complete POS?

With all the dismal accounts in the media about the Obamacare roll-out, the higher prices of medical insurance coupled with all the perpetual smiley faces in the White House, one has to wonder, who is really NUTS here?

By November 2014 the shutdown will be a barely-remembered hiccup, shrouded in the mists of time. Hell, it feels that way already. What won’t be shrouded in the mists of time will be the disaster that is Obamacare. The federal exchange will not miraculously start working, young people will avoid signing up in droves, working-class people will be crushed by premium hikes, and the IRS will hand down fines in their typical draconian fashion to people who never had a legitimate chance to enroll. All of this would simply have been accepted as the new normal if Ted Cruz hadn’t stood up for hours on the Senate floor. Cruz successfully moved the ACA from the “done deal” column to the “this ain’t over” column. We need to buck up. The fight has just begun.

You know what one of the definitions of insanity is? Refusing to admit that your health care program is a disaster and going ahead full speed to force it on the people of your country, whether they like it or not, whether they can afford it or not. Yup, that’s what’s happening in the land of the free. We’re being led like a ruthless dictator would rule. No listening to reason, no compromise, no way but his way, and the rest of us be damned. Arrogant p@#ck.

What the hell is a chyron? Yeah, I could look it up, but why use that damn word in the first place? You trying to turn into another George Will, Ed?

HiJack on October 18, 2013 at 1:07 PM

Chyron is a brand name for a video graphics system that a lot of TV stations use to put titles, captions, and other graphics on the screen. Just like the words “Xerox,” “Kleenex,” and “Velcro,” it became the accepted generic term for anything that does this.

“Providence has ordained that I should be the greatest liberator of humanity. I am freeing man from the restraints of an intelligence that has taken charge, from the dirty and degrading self-mortification of a false vision called conscience and morality, and from the demands of a freedom and independence which only a very few can bear.”

MSNBC deliberately lies to smear anyone who is not a slobbering progressive, and any chyron they run is not questioned by most of the clueless who tune in. The zombie viewers of this shameless channel, who have no idea how the ‘Affordable Care Act’ (snicker) was crammed through congress, now believe that the problems with the disastrous sham of ‘health care’ are because of the GOP. You can take that to the bank.